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Alien Brain and Other Soaping Headaches

Some days when I’m soaping, it’s all I can do to keep the gremlins at bay. I often CPOP my soap (cold process oven process), which means that I put my soap molds in the oven at low temperature to force gel. Typically, the oven is set at the lowest temp, the mold is placed in the oven when you put your soap to bed and then shut off 20 minutes to an hour later. Then you leave your soap for about 24 hours before unmolding.

Lately, I’d been having…uneven…results. Lots of ash, which I don’t really mind but it was getting a little thick. And then I would see this ripply top and occasionally bubbles on the sides. So I researched and hunted and talked to my friends on the soap forums. Finally! A name for it. “Alien Brain”. The fantastic thing about identifying a problem, is that once you put a name on it, you can find a solution. A little research and I found this helpful post on SoapQueen. And that nasty business with the bubbles and bumps turned in to this lovely three color Lavender Patchouli blend:

Bubbles: gone. Ash: gone. Me: Happy.

So fast forward to this morning, when my soaping projects just started hitting on all cylinders. This morning I tested alfalfa powder as a natural colorant. Natural colorants aren’t typically as vivid as micas or other colorants, but they have a lovely muted tone. I added the alfalfa at trace and got this light yellow/green soap before insulation. I also threw in a sample of Frankincense and Fir fragrance oil for laughs.

Alfalfa powder test

Oatstraw Test

The oatstraw test was a little darker than the alfalfa powder. I soaked the powder in a small amount of the oil which I added also added at trace.

Since things were moving along so swimmingly, I banged out three additional batches: A two color white tea and ginger with mica swirl, baby bedtime with pink brazilian clay and plumeria with purple brazilian clay and mica pencil line.

I’m really excited to unmold all of these batches tomorrow. And that’s the source of another of my problems. I discovered last week that just because I can get the soap out of the mold, doesn’t mean I should. Last week, after my Friday soaping bender, I made Fixer promise not to let me unmold for a least 24 hours. Boy that extra 6 hours sure makes a difference. Where I previously had left small pieces of soap stuck to the sides of the mold, now my loaves were coming cleanly away from the sides. A nice soap planer can fix a multitude of soapy sins, but isn’t it just better not to have the problem in the first place?

One thing that this blog is making increasingly clear is that I need to spend some quality time with my camera and really improve my product photography. I’ll be sure to share what I learn.